Afridigest Week in Review: Cash for crafts

+In the hot seat w/ Eghosa Omoigui +Layoffs at Alerzo +Insights from analyzing 200 African startup valuations +A couple of acquisitions +The impact of SVB's collapse +More

Emeka Ajene

Mar 13

The Afridigest Week in Review is a weekly recap of what happened across Africa's tech ecosystem for Africa-focused founders, executives, and investors.

Welcome back, old & new friends 👋🏽! The most clicked link from last Monday’s newsletter was 'Cash management for early-stage startups.' And ICYMI, see yesterday’s Fintech Review and Saturday’s essay.

📌 Some housekeeping: The upcoming Afridigest Lagos meetup has been postponed to Saturday the 25th at Nad’s request. I’ll email folks who signed up with more details about the event.

If you’re new here: welcome — this Week in Review is sent on Mondays, the Fintech Review on Sundays, and an original essay occasionally goes out on Saturdays. For past essays and digests, visit the archive.

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Week 10 2023: March 5-11

🔦 Deals

EQUITY DEALS ACROSS THE CONTINENT

🇰🇪 Powered by People, a Kenyan B2B wholesale e-commerce marketplace, raised an $8M Series A led by Altos Ventures, with participation from Golden Ventures and Susa Ventures. The company raised a $5M seed round co-led by Susa Ventures and Golden Ventures in Week 12 2022.
🇨🇩 Itot Africa, a Congolese edtech platform providing training & digital educational tools to corporates, SMEs, NGOs & entrepreneurs, raised an undisclosed amount from DRC Angels.
🇰🇪 Badili, a Kenyan used smartphone buy-back 're-commerce' platform, raised an undisclosed amount from Renew Capital.

M&A

Talent marketplace Andela acquired technical skills assessment platform Qualified for an undisclosed amount.
Nigerian online healthcare delivery platform Doctoora was acquired for an undisclosed amount by Evercare Hospital. Dr Debo Odulana, Formerly Doctoora’s Founder/CEO, joined Evercare as Chief Innovation Officer.

INVESTOR ACTIVITY

The European Investment Bank is considering a $20M investment in Seedstars Africa Ventures’ $80M Fund 1.
Nigeria’s EchoVC formally launched EchoVC Chain, its $8M “pilot” blockchain-focused seed fund. EchoVC Chain’s portfolio companies include Fonbnk, Stakefair formerly (BetDemand), and MUDA.
EMURGO Africa and Kepple Africa Ventures established a joint venture to invest in African Web3 businesses.
AI Capital officially launched Fund III which will target early growth stage VC/PE investments across Africa and South and Southeast Asia. The fund’s founding partners are South African entrepreneurs Michael Jordaan, Willem Roos, Nic Kohler, and Roger Grobler, and existing Fund I and II investments include TymeBank, Optasia, and Rain.

🔥🪑 In the hot seat with EchoVC's Eghosa Omoigui

EchoVC is a Lagos-based early-stage VC firm whose investments include Gro Intelligence, Cellulant, and Migo. I caught up with its Founder & Managing General Partner, Eghosa Omogui in this week’s Hot Seat feature.

📚 Quick hits

FOR YOUR READING PLEASURE

Winning the AI products arms race — Like some (many?) of you, I’m a bit tired of AI think pieces but found this article from Reforge on building successful AI products refreshing.
Indus Valley Annual Report 2023 — A thorough look at India’s tech ecosystem from Blume Ventures

AFRIDIGEST ARTICLES

27 women founder-CEOs that have raised over $3 million in Africa — Read 27 short profiles of the problem spaces these women leaders are working in & the solutions they’re building.
The challenges women leaders face in Africa’s tech ecosystem — Featuring Tarneem Saeed, CEO & Founder, alsoug; Nelly Chatue-Diop, CEO & Co-Founder, Ejara; Bente Krogmann, CEO & Co-Founder, mTek; Yvonne Johnson, MD & Co-Founder, Indicina; and Hilda Moraa, CEO & Founder, Pezesha.

PUBLIC BOOKMARKING

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi’s approach to decision-making

👀 Visual of the Week

Here’s the latest version of this infographic. Thanks for your feedback & keep it coming 🙌🏽

🕵️‍♀️ In case you missed it

NEWS

Nigeria’s Alerzo laid off an estimated 400-600 people, according to Semafor and Techcabal
The Competition Authority of Kenya is investigating Uber, Jumia, Bolt, Glovo, and other online grocery and food delivery platforms to make regulatory and policy suggestions
Fake bitcoin platform defrauds half-a-million Egyptians
Meet the 15 startups in the inaugural Google for Startups Accelerator Women Founders: Africa cohort

ESSAYS & OP-EDS

Temi Ransome-Kuti, Sr. Associate at First Check Africa, writes ‘What I learned from collecting and analyzing 200 African start-up valuations’
Anita Lettink, Partner at the Strategic Management Centre, writes ‘The disruptive power of African HR Tech startups’
Fred Swaniker, Founder & CEO of African Leadership Group, writes ‘The secret to creating millions of technology jobs in Africa’

💼 HIRING

TLcom Capital is hiring a pair of Investment Analysts, one in Nairobi and one in Lagos. Apply before March 31st.

🎰 OPPORTUNITIES

Founders in Africa are invited to apply before March 31st to the Morgan Stanley Inclusive Ventures Lab.
Social ventures in Rwanda, Uganda, and Tanzania targeting base of pyramid communities are invited to apply before March 31st to be a part of Impacc’s third venture investment cohort. Five selected startups will receive equity investments between $30K and $150K.
African startups building digital solutions for electricity access, grid management, and/or greener power that have raised less than €1M are invited to apply before May 15th to the Agence Française de Développement’s Digital Energy Challenge

🙊 The last word

THE IMPACT OF SVB’S COLLAPSE

I planned to write here about the impact of SVB’s collapse in Africa, but the immediate crisis seems to have been generally averted with yesterday’s announcement that “depositors will have access to all of their money starting Monday, March 13.” There'll likely be some knock-on effects though.

But for your benefit, here are some tweets I planned to weave a narrative around: Adewale, Chika, Matt, Taita, Eghosa, Aaron.

And it’s worth noting that there was probably more startup (not to mention investor) capital tied up in SVB than some of those tweets might have you believe.

If you have thoughts/comments here, I’d love to hear them!

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